DPAC fully support our good friends Denise and MHRN in urging Rethink to issue an immediate apology for using this offensive term.

If you want to email Rethink’s CEO too his email is mark.winstanley@rethink.org

Dear Mr Winstanley,

Members of the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) and our friends at Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) were included in your mail-out below. We were shocked and bewildered that Rethink thought it acceptable to use the term “disease burden” in relation to mental health in a bulk mail-out. In this context it is brutal language and has caused offence to those of us who live with mental distress and to other members of the disability movement who have received your mailing.

“Disease burden” is a specialist piece of jargon used in disease informatics but, even when used in this context, disabled people do not accept that it is neutral. No language is neutral and this term should never have been used in a mail-out to random disabled people. You are no doubt aware that the words “disease” and, above all, “burden” are highly toxic to disabled people and those living with mental distress. It was crass to send this out willy nilly. Is there no sensitivity at Rethink?

We urge you to issue an immediate apology to all of the people who received this mailing and rightly experienced it as offensive and hurtful.

Yours sincerely,

Denise McKenna

Co-founder, MHRN

Manifesto for Better Mental Health

Dear

Today we’re launching A Manifesto for Better Mental Health which sets out practical changes that a future Government must make in order to ensure our mental and physical health are valued equally. We’ve joined forces with our colleagues across mental health to agree on five key areas we are calling on all political parties to commit to if they are elected in 2015.

Mental health accounts for 23% of the disease burden, but it gets just 13% of the NHS budget and funding has been cut even further for the last three years.

This is not acceptable. The next Government must seriously tackle this issue.

1. Fair funding for mental health
2. Give children a good start in life
3. Improve physical health care for people with mental health problems
4. Improve the lives of people with mental health problems
5. Better access to mental health services